this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2025
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Selfhosted

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Please bear with me as I don't know where else to ask.

I want to start to self host but do not know where to start. I would like to start small. Just something that might not be beneficial but to get my feet wet. It does not even have to be practical.

I am not tech illiterate and have my fair share of technology around me hut self hosting has always been a daunting task.

I am scared to start.

I am already using a PiHole at home but that was kind of plug and play and just worked.

I would be incredibly grateful if someone could guide me to some resource or tell me what an easy first step would be.

An FAQ or self hosting for dummies.

Most resources I found assumed some previous knowledge.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

If you look up "Dr. Frankenstein Discord" you'll find the community that helped me get familiar with Docker. As in, several people held my hands for about 2 weeks non-stop. I can't tell you enough how much I love that group. But containers aren't the only way to go.

I hear people talking about Proxmox a lot, and it seems (as far as I can tell) to be one of the easiest platforms for hosting many services one a machine. Next computer I set up, I'll be going that route.

Regardless of how you do it, the knowledge base and skills mostly transfer like a Venn diagram. The most important pieces to get started are hardware and patience. Everything else can be solved with online teamwork

[–] [email protected] 1 points 23 hours ago

One more advanced hypervisor that I would recommend is Apache Cloudstack. Requires a little more networking though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I will check out that community. Seems incredibly friendly and supporting!

Proxmox is something in my distant future but regardless. I will hopefully get there eventually

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Having an environment like proxmox is very handy for learning and testing. When you find something to test, spin up a clean machine and you have a safe environment to learn that can be removed after. You can also try out different distros that way.

I'd recommend setting up Incus instead however, it works fine on a desktop/laptop if you're running a linux distro they support and don't have a dedicated machine to use.

They also have a very good tutorial/demo that shows the basics: https://linuxcontainers.org/incus/try-it/